Another Stupid movie to Overreact to...

Still, the fact they encourage kids to act up in the theaters? Brilliant. They're not going to take that to any other movie ever.

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Exactly...

I can certainly get behind interaction in what they watch at home, but getting them to do that in the cinema is a horrible idea.

Especially since this is probably the first cinematic experience for those kids in the audience, it gives them the wrong impression on how to handle themselves in that environment. They're not old enough to determine that they're supposed to be noisy and one movie but not at another.

I support the Oogiloves movies and concept just to see Dr Tooth go bananas
I kid. Seriously I wouldn't let my kids watch this garbage. Theres a LOT of garbage on this level too(Doodlebops, Wiggles, Teletubbies, etc) This is the sort of Satanic programming we were warned about in the 80's, lulz

I support the Oogiloves movies and concept just to see Dr Tooth go bananas
I kid. Seriously I wouldn't let my kids watch this garbage. Theres a LOT of garbage on this level too(Doodlebops, Wiggles, Teletubbies, etc) This is the sort of Satanic programming we were warned about in the 80's, lulz

There is one huge difference. That movie would have really been interactive instead of false interactivity like Oogieloves.

The movie concept centered on a mechanism for changing the course of the film’s plot in response to the reaction of the audience. In 1980, this would have required multiple projectors and an agile projectionist, but later, the ability of an audience member to impact the direction of a storyline became standard in digital games and entertainment.

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There is NO way that would have worked. I dunno how Clue worked before Home video, but a choose your own adventure movie seems completely impossible when it comes to logistics. It's probably not even feasible now with digital. What Jim wanted vs. what this movie did was that the yelling and shouting was supposed to do something to the movie. What this film did was just have people yell at characters that don't do anything and have a preprogrammed response, so if nothing happens, they sit around answering their own questions. Just like most of kid's television today.

What this film did was just have people yell at characters that don't do anything and have a preprogrammed response, so if nothing happens, they sit around answering their own questions. Just like most of kid's television today.

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I'll agree with you on that.

At least Blue's Clues had off-screen children awnsering the questions. And even when Barney started talking to his audience (Which was around 2002, with a few earlier cases), he was either suggesting that they follow along with what the other characters were doing, or he was just asking them casual questions - The story was never supported by audience participation.

I think it's safe to say that we can blame that awful Dora the Explorer show for the cluster of "interactive" kid's series' that are out these days.

At least Blue's Clues had off-screen children awnsering the questions. And even when Barney started talking to his audience (Which was around 2002, with a few earlier cases), he was either suggesting that they follow along with what the other characters were doing, or he was just asking them casual questions - The story was never supported by audience participation.

I think it's safe to say that we can blame that awful Dora the Explorer show for the cluster of "interactive" kid's series' that are out these days.

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Not a fan of Blue, either... but his was far more organic than Dora the Explorer. That's the one that broke kid's television. Of course, the show is supposed to be a computer game somehow, and it would have worked better as a computer game.

Still, the idea of a movie that has different sub-categories of what happens next that the audience can control, while it sounds like the coolest thing ever, was WAAAAAY too ambitious on Jim's part. I'm sure if he was still alive, we'd've seen a series of DVD's with that sort of option... maybe theme park attractions or very limited engagement films in theaters, but I don't see it being very mainstream no matter how it turned out. And I swear there were all these visions of the future stories in kids magazines about how that was going to be the norm now. I don't see anything like that catching on.

Also, I'd like to add... Rocky Horror didn't start out with people throwing toilet paper at the screen and reacting to lines. That happened after a while when some ans of the film were making fun of something that was already not taking itself seriously at all. Though I wonder if the Find the Fish segment of Monty Python's Meaning of Life had people shouting out at the theaters like the announcer told them to.

I did see Clue in the theatre - the ending was prechosen by movie theatre, audience participation wasn't a factor.

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So that basically answers my question. They had prechosen endings, so they only needed the standard amount of reels. Jim's vision wouldn't have worked unless the films were put together in a certain way and shown at specific theaters with the variations, like that film.

And then when VHS and DVD came out, the film worked even better for a home audience, correct? Jim's film could have worked on home video, but it would have been perfect for DVD or even laserdisk. He was around for laser disk, right? Yeah. Weren't Dragon's Lair, Space Ace, and the rare dubbed version of Lupin III called Cliffhanger all Laserdisk videogames? I guess that could have worked like that. As a theatrical film, no.

So, is this thing out on DVD yet? I'm guessing that if it was, the producers would market the ever-loving heck out of it.

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It's a matter of defeatism or arrogance if this thing gets marketed. Considering the marketing for the film was TWICE the budget of production, I'd say arrogance over defeatism. If this guy didn't do it under his own production company, he'd be fired in a red hot second after the first weekend box office. That's hypothetically if he didn't get laughed out of the studio for proposing an out of date looking preschool film.

I'm sure when it hits DVD, there's going to try to be a marketing blitz, but the damage is done. It will probably make up something on DVD, where it should have been in the first place.